A LITTLE BACKGROUND

The New Being Project is a non-profit corporation that explores the
strong likelihood that our species may be headed into a rapid
evolutionary jump, one of comparable impact to the momentous and sudden
leap from anaerobic to aerobic bacteria, or from asexual to sexual
reproduction. We may even be at a juncture where we can invent such a leap. NBP's present task is to identify and study people who may be "edgelings";
those who might give us hints as to how to amplify or modify the
direction the leap takes. We may all become co-architects in evolution:
A radical venture indeed!

[The human brain performs] in
an unimagined range of ways bearing no relation to the selective
reasons for initial enlargement. Most of human society may rest on
these non-adaptive consequences.
-Stephen Jay Gould

In our inquiry, we're inspired by the work of people like Michael Murphy The Future of the Body, Peter RussellThe Global Brain, Terence and Dennis McKenna The Invisible Landscape and Time Wave Zero, Jerome C. Glenn Future Mind: Artificial Intelligence and Barbara Marx Hubbard (see quote in left sidebar). See also our Bibliography, the LINKS page and the Darwin's Creation Myth page.

WHERE WE'RE LOOKING

Human Electromagnetic Sensitivity Study - Many UFO
and/or near-death experiencers claim the sudden onset afterward of
sometimes debilitating sensitivity to normal electrical events in their
everyday environments, e.g., they can't be in the same room with an
operating microwave, or they get suddenly nauseated when driving
underneath cross-country power transmission lines. Do such experiences
rig people with "more sail to the wind" as Dr. Wayne London so aptly
puts it? We are currently working closely with David Ritchey, PhD.
who's developed and administered a thorough questionnaire study
trying to see what correlates with what among people with many kinds of
heightened sensitivities. (As of 6/2003, the data has been collected,
and we're preparing a paper about the very robust results to be
submitted to a refereed journal. And Dr.Ritchey's exciting book, The H.I.S.S. of the A.S.P.: Understanding the Anomalously Sensitive Person has recently been published. Click on the title to read much more about it.

An anthology: Zen in the Art of Close Encounters: Crazy Wisdom and UFOs
- The mind-pretzeling nature of UFO contact hints very strongly to us
that such events may be paving stones on the royal route to an
evolutionary leap. In April, '95, NBP published a collection of 36
authors, thinkers, investigators and cartoonists who've delved into the
best kinds of high and low strangenesses -- the kinds that present us
with paradoxes on top of paradoxes. Our neurological relays pop --
which may be exactly the point! (As John Mack [see LINKS]
put it so well: "UFOs are an outreach program for the
consciousness-impaired.") The book has met with considerable critical
acclaim in the UFO press, and is available in quality stores: Barnes
& Noble, B. Dalton, Borders, Amazon.com and more to come. Also from
us by mail. ($8.70 ppd in USA only). Make checks to The New Being
Project.) Go to ZACE for more about the book and a reprint of a short essay from it by the editor.

We are a deeply adventurous species.
This is a stupendously adventurous universe! To think that the entire
universe was set up to end up listening to Vivaldi quartets in drawing
rooms -- it just doesn't make sense!
-Michael Murphy, founder of Esalen; author of The Future of the Body

IMPORTANT NOTE

For brevity's sake, we've left large gaps in the outline above: Who are the likely "edgelings"? What are some of the strong signals that a human evolutionary leap might be imminent? (See the "edgelings" page) What are our yardsticks
for a leap as distinct from a mutation or even a speciation? (Hint: The
evolutionary rules change after a leap.) Why don't we speak of "higher
consciousness"? (Hint: Evolution may not care what the New Age or any
spiritual discipline thinks. For an impious speculation on the wiliness
evolution often displays, go to Evojoke.) Click on the links in the above text for more as well as a short bibliography.
What are our best guesses on the way evolution works? (Hint: We're
Post-Darwinists. . .Huh? Post-Darwinist evolution? . . .Isn't that an
oxymoron? See the Darwin's Creation Myth
page for some paradigm-pranging propositions that smite the
evolutionary orthodoxy not a few mighty blows. . .and yet don't embrace
any kind of "creationism".

To use an analogy of Barbara Marx Hubbard,
imagine what a committee of bacteria would have said about the
environmental impact of a small group of bacteria's plans to use
photosynthesis, 3,500 million years ago: "The oxygen produced by this
process is dangerous stuff. It is poisonous to all known forms of life,
and it is also highly flammable, likely to burn us all to ashes. It is
almost certain to lead to the destruction of life." Without doubt,
photosynthesis would have been banned as "selfish, unnatural and
irresponsible." Luckily for us, no such committee existed and
photosynthesis went on ahead. It did indeed bring about a major crisis,
but on the other side of it came plants, animals, you and I.
-Peter Russell in The Global Brain

This search engine works with "*" as a wild card. E.g., enter the term
"question*" (without the quotes), and you'll get question, questions, questioning,
questionnaire, etc.

How to navigate this site:
First-time visitors will understand things best if you read through
this over-view page entirely before jumping to any internal page links
in the text here. Then you can back up, and the fun will begin as you
select what linked page to read next.

Please email us if you're excited by what
you read here, especially if you're an experiencer, researcher and/or
clinician in this or a related area. We want to meet you, add you to
our mailing list, share information, maybe more. See contact page for information.

If the human brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't.
-Emerson Pugh

Gautama Siddhartha's three cardinal questions: 1) Where did we come from? 2) Who are we? 3) Where are we going?